Two People Are Dead After Tesla Car Crashes Into Tree And Bursts Into Flames

Two people have died after the Tesla vehicle they were travelling in ran off the road and hit a tree.

Authorities have found neither person was in the driver's seat at the time of the crash.

Police have confirmed a man was found in the front passenger seat of the car and another male was in the rear passenger seat of the car, with the latter sitting upright.

Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman doesn't believe the car was being driven by a human.

The incident happened in Houston, Texas close to midnight and an investigation is underway into what happened shortly before the crash.

One avenue of inquiry will be whether the car's Auto-Pilot mode was switched on and, if so, how the car's sensors and technology allowed the vehicle to go violently off road.

KPRC 2 spoke to one man at the scene of the tragedy who said the victims wanted to take the fully electric 2019 Tesla Model S out for a spin.

The witness said the driver might have jumped in the backseat before the car crashed into the tree only a few hundred metres away.

It took firefighters several hours to put out the flames caused by the incident and used a whopping 87,000 litres of water. At one point, firefighters had to call Tesla to ask how to extinguish an electric battery fire.

It comes after Tesla CEO Elon Musk praised the safety behind the Auto-Pilot mode.

Writing on Twitter, the tech billionaire said: "Tesla with Autopilot engaged now approaching 10 times lower chance of accident than average vehicle."

Tesla also recently released a statement on its website saying 'Model S, Model X and Model 3 have achieved the lowest overall probability of injury of any vehicle ever tested by the US government's New Car Assessment Program'.

"In the 1st quarter [of 2021], we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged," the company said.

"For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 978 thousand miles driven.

"By comparison, NHTSA's most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 484,000 miles."

Featured Image Credit: KPRC 2​/NBC

Topics: tesla, News

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie